


Preventative Swindle

by metropolisjournal (TKodami)



Series: Step Nine [1]
Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Humor, M/M, canonical movie events, scheming bats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 03:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7417156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TKodami/pseuds/metropolisjournal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All good things come to bats that plan. </p><p> </p><p>  <em>Written as a fill for the dceu_kinkmeme <a href="http://dceu-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/1491.html?thread=25043#cmt25043">flashfic prompt</a>, summarized: use a word generator, get something awesome, write a fic. Revised for AO3 with extra wordiness!</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Preventative Swindle

* (B) *

The Committee for Superterrestial Defense had been deadlocked on the salvage rights for the Kryptonian spacecraft for months. Call it a lack of imagination, but they simply could not understand the full ramifications of technologically superior, hostile alien life, and anxiety ran high about awarding the contract to the wrong company. So the committee bickered and wheedled and counter-proposed. A motion to increase their salary passed 15-2. Business as usual.

* (B) *

The public clambered for news about the alien technology as the alien himself flew around the world in form-fitting armor and a little red cape.

Still the committee dragged their heels. Then the little red cape rescued two school buses from a sudden volcanic fissure, and the pressure was on.

The senior senator from Washington felt the squeeze from the White House, and he put the squeeze on the committee. Choose some company--any company--to award the technology rights. (The proposal pile reached the senior senator's hip by this point.)

Just as the conjunction between congressional will and public desire seemed in ascendancy, Stagg Enterprises dropped its proposal. Promising bids were pulled with stammered apologies. The committee scrambled to find the winning combination of minimal incompetency and a basement-rate price tag in the remaining calf-deep pile. Lex Luthor's latest proposal read like a Iain Banks wet-dream, with no less than five pages devoted to hovertrains. But as all of the other bids evaporated, it was only satisfactory choice left. Before the steering committee released the General's body into Lex Luthor's custody, they suffered themselves to hear one more round of corporate hyperbole.

Lucius Fox talked a good game on Wayne Enterprises' behalf. Department of Defense lackies were given the appropriate tours, practically drooling over the state-of-the-art equipment in Wayne Biotech labs. Bruce Wayne had even put in an appearance at Capitol Hill that hadn't shamed or embarrassed his company's good name.

All in all, Wayne had a solid bid.

There was just one problem.

Wayne Enterprises (Bruce? No, what would a world renowned playboy care about _research contracts_ ) wanted the body, and refused to share.

With anybody.

* (B) *

On the day the steering committee decided to say yes to Lex, the senior senator from Washington hosted a party in Metropolis at the Met. Under the watchful eyes of Matisse and Van Gogh, partygoers nibbled finger-foods and laughed (discreetly). On a whole, it was one of those to-dos where Capitol Hill rubbed elbows with the urban elite, and everyone who attended came away with a little more faith in the political process, and everyone who didn't couldn't feel the gears of democracy creak along just a bit smoother with extra money greasing its joints. Everyone was in good spirits; the losing bidders were more than happy to sip someone else's champagne for an evening.

Bruce Wayne ran his eyes across the DC jet-setters. The billionaire playboy couldn't remember what this party was for, only that he'd not-so-subtly invited himself along as a plus-one to a handsome party whip who had arrived on the red carpet alone, but hadn't stayed that way when Bruce stepped out of the paparazzi to attach himself to the man's side.

There of course could be no motive for Bruce Wayne suddenly ditching his companion inside the party, just his well-attested fickle nature. No discernible motive for Bruce Wayne, scion of the Wayne family, to glad-hand his way through each of the Department of Defense steering committee members.

Bruce laughed at the jokes about his company's pitch, and picked up a martini glass full of a verdant liquid from one of the circulating trays.

Hey, no hard feelings right? Wayne Enterprises had made the same pitch Lex Luthor made, (minus the monologue about man's Promethean burdens and the five pages of hovertrains). But out of the mouth of Bruce Wayne--his martini glass hovering suspiciously close to one of the more partisan steering committee stooges--WayneCorp's pitch sounded lascivious, unscientific, wrong. The stooge made an off-color joke about dead bodies and one of the more baseless rumors about Bruce's sexual appetites.

Monologues seemed catching, and Bruce stopped himself before he launched himself into a Luthor-esque tirade. Junior raised a glass at Bruce from across the room. Lex had the same shark grin as the company's first CEO, and in the privacy of his mind, Bruce found himself conflating the son with the father.

The General’s body arrived in Luthor's lab the next day.

Meanwhile, Bruce helped towel the martini off the stooge's lapels...really, what were the chances that an appletini would stain gabardine?

* (B) *

But let's not lose focus on the party. Bruce Wayne may not have remembered why he was at the Metropolis party, but the Bat did. The Bat discreetly watched the little red cape hold up the crumbling foundations of a destroyed home in Bhaktapur that one of the more bored socialites was watching on their phone.

The Bat considered, weighed and tested the philosophic approach to a god who did triage. Gods didn't remain placid for long; this world tested _saints_. Saint Alexis was called to honor and approbation by the people, and on his day of tested faith, he fled. What might little red cape, with the power to scorch the earth and crush skyscrapers, do on his one very bad day?

The answer to that question spun out to a fanciful degree as he swept the opulent arches of the Met's _Art of the Flower_ exhibit for the available exits, should he need to make a quick retreat.

The Bat had a plan--plans inside of plans, in fact. Bruce lived for a well-executed plan; it kept him from feeling his forty-five years.

 _This_ plan was an oldie, but a goodie, and it had nine parts.

* (B) *

_Step One_. Identify the most objectionable committee stooge. Objectionable committee stooge behavior can be identified by unnecessary toadying, fund grubbing, overt moral hypocrisy.

Bruce observed a junior senator from Louisiana fiddled with his wedding ring, then slipped it into his pants pocket as the Kane heiress brushed up against him on her way to the side-exit. Good, not great.

A junior aide to the senior senator from Washington was hitting up funds from Queen Industries. Promising, but not important enough to warrant access to--

And there was the man himself, the senior senator from Washington, pressing the flesh with Lex Luthor. The senior senator didn’t pat his pants overtly, but his fingers brushed the outside of his pocket in Lex’s presence too many times to be a coincidence.

* (B) *

_Step Two_. Aggressively flirt to keep the stooge in a state of discomfort. A hand on the shoulder, a few seconds longer than it needed to be. A brush of hips against the other’s side, that couldn’t be seen as entirely accidental. Prolonged eye contact. Sip the drink. Smirk. Assess.

"Senator Barrows," Bruce murmured into the man's ear, moistening his lips _far too close_ to the senator's skin not to be felt.

Bruce's stooge reared back from the attention. When Barrows had caught Bruce's eye, he did what Bruce considered the money dance with his eyes. A particular kind of gaze that skimmed Bruce's face, the cut of his suit, the black leather derby shoes whose pricetag the senator had likely never even seen, over to the hand resting enticingly close to inappropriate on the senator's hip. The gaze that told the person how much, exactly, Bruce Wayne was worth, and contained within in the assessment of what a person was likely to do to keep it.

The senator made a decision. He extricated himself from Bruce's grip, but he turned away from Lex with a very, _very_ real smile on his face and said, "Bruce" almost as charmingly as the trust fund set.

Bruce smiled wolfishly. 

He could work with that.

* (B) *

_Step Three_. Confirm only borderline-distasteful rumors. Remain vague about the more niche ones. Who knows when Bruce Wayne's taste for fire cupping might come in handy to explain a strange set of bruises?

Bruce was impressed. Senator Barrows hadn't once brought up even the barest whiff of the concept of money. He actually seemed _interested_ in Bruce. As a person. No wonder he was top stooge. It was therefore Bruce who had to lead the conversation back around to the Wayne Enterprises bid, and not very subtly.

“Why Bruce, I didn’t know you had such an interest in frozen bodies.” The senator smirked. “Does this explain your trip with Miss America to the Antarctic next month?”

“No, but I hear that Etyanna’s does brisk business in that line of work, senator,” Bruce quipped back. “I should ask her the next time I’m in the neighborhood.” The joke’s not especially witty. But Etyanna’s brothel, catering to ultra-high-end clientele was just infamous enough on the Hill to make the senator double-take, eye Bruce just a little more closely, wonder just what a man like Bruce Wayne might spend a hundred thousand dollars on for an evening.

 _Step Four_ , a natural outgrowth of _Step Three_. Lure stooge into a sense of camaraderie by laughing at tasteless joke. Especially if it is about Bruce Wayne’s borderline-distasteful media presence.

The speculative looks faded as Bruce Wayne got a few more drinks into the senator, and they moved on to sports (neither of them watched anything), models (Bruce wasn’t particularly interested, the senator seemed to be politely disinclined), and foreign policy.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know anything about how thorny inter-agency space travel has become in the wake of the Incident,” the senator said. “I suppose you wouldn’t know about inter-agency anything, unless you were _entering_ the _a-gent-cy_.” With an emphasis on _gent_. As though both of them were friends enough to joke about Bruce Wayne's sexual proclivities.

Bruce tried not to die inside as he laughed.

* (B) *

_Step Five_. Spill a drink down stooge's suit, lift a keycard during the awkward patting down that follows.

Bruce couldn’t even bring himself to feel remorseful (see: the flashburn of horror left over from step four.) , as he watched in slow-motion: his arm came up, a socialite brushed up against him on the way to the hors d'oeuvres, and Bruce exaggeratedly slumped against the senator, the glass tipping its contents against the senator’s jacket.

The scene played out clockwork from there: outrage on the senator’s part, a very hangdog look on Bruce’s, a golly-gee routine that shouldn’t earn him any points, but the senator was very drunk and Bruce looked very drunk too. Minutes later, Bruce and the senator were as chummy as a bat vigilante and a badly punning stooge can be, the keycard to LexCorp labs tucked snugly into the lining of Bruce’s jacket.

 _Step Six_. Remove Stooge's suit jacket. Offer to pay for dry cleaning.

Bruce even manages a genuine smile when he suggests that he can pick up the dry cleaning tab. If he weren’t selling out Earth’s best interests to Junior, he might kind of like congressional stooge. But he’s making good now, isn’t he, even if he doesn’t know it. Bruce offers him a handkerchief when congressional stooge is suddenly sweating, and excuses himself to the bathroom to run his cell’s RFID cloner.

 _Step Seven_. Return keycard to suit jacket after card RFID has been cloned. Leave jacket on the back of random chair at host's party to divert suspicion if absence of keycard has been noted.

 _Step Eight_. (and this is key to the entire operation) Do not under any circumstances actually pay for dry cleaning.

It was a preventative measure, really. If Bruce Wayne paid for the dry cleaning of every society wonk he poured a drink down, the Wayne Family trust wouldn't survive the year.

* (B) *

A change of scenery required a new plan. After three guards have been tied to their security terminals and the lab cameras have been disabled, Bruce slipped through the halls of LexCorp like smoke. The keycard bypassed the last three security layers. A satisfying chirp accompanied the final security lock as the cryo-storage room opened.

Bruce stood in front of the dead general. He had access to Zod's body for twenty minutes before an alarm would trip. Twenty minutes before Luthor could lay a finger on anything kryptonian. A lifetime for the Batman.

He spread his collection kit on the counter.

...How the hell is he supposed to get a sample off an invulnerable slab of extraterrestrial, anyway?

Bruce sighed as he lowered his bat-cutter, now mangled beyond repair. He really liked the tactical high-energy laser attachment. He’d have to hide the next one in the R&D budget. The Batman ran his tests as quickly as he could, muttering something about the fate of man who doesn’t equip for a backup plan.

When Bruce slipped out of the building nineteen minutes later with an astounding array of data loaded into his jump drive, the alarms did not trip. The guards woke later with a hole in their memories, but they chalked it up to bad booze and the boss was none the wiser the next morning when the the General’s body was wheeled from cryo-storage into his lab, the gleam of victory in junior's eye.

* (B) *

_Step Nine_. The Wrap-Up. Wherein the original plan is judged by the fruits of its labor. All good swindles have a Step Nine. And Batman was nothing if not a consummate planner.

(Even so, more often than not, the Bat skipped this step, as the number of his plans that required new plans to deal with the contingencies of his previous plans was, well, depressing even for a revenge-fueled vigilante.)

It took months before Bruce had worked out what Step Nine to his Prevent Alien Tyranny plan had even been. He had swindled Lex out of his exclusive on kryptonian tech, but Bruce hadn't found any way to contain the horror that Lex had unleashed on Metropolis that hadn't also proved fatal to Superman. To _Clark_. When the Kryptonian had been tested, he hadn't raged, he hadn't quit; he picked up the spear, and fought the strength of Luthor's abomination with the breath of his lungs and the sweat of his brow. Died for it too. Wasn't that the absolute kicker.

Even then, _step nine_ had only fully occurred to him as Superman stood before Batman again. The Bat crouched on a gargoyle in the Gotham Narrows, and the Kryptonian floated in front of him in his house’s shield, his color high and eyes blazing (figure of speech)--so clearly not dead. It occurred to Bruce that _step nine_ might require more of him than he could reasonably be expected to give.

“You look good,” he said, because at that point, Bruce Wayne wasn’t actually thinking, and his plans weren’t actually planned, but the words had come out of his mouth and he couldn’t recall them through force of will.

“Don’t break my city,” he added after another moment of thought.

The boyscout grinned like he’d won the lottery _and_ discovered the true meaning of Christmas--he had just come back from the dead, so even drying paint must seem miraculous, in context--and Bruce felt something odd vibrate in the region of his heart.

God...he was going to need another plan, wasn’t he.

**Author's Note:**

> My very first (and barely so) superbat fic. There are two more planned parts, and I'm already _deeply apologetic_ for even thinking about writing them. More will arrive as I take breaks from drawing to fill kinkmeme prompts!
> 
> I'd like to give snuggles to all of the anon commenters over on the kinkmeme. The enthusiastic reception of the original fic-bit convinced me to polish this a little and put in on Ao3. So c'mere, nonnies, you. I adore each and every one of you! 8D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Approaching Step Five](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11680998) by [AurumCalendula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AurumCalendula/pseuds/AurumCalendula)




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